A boardroom in the University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business may be the last place you expect a leader of a European country to turn up – but that’s been the case twice in the last four months.

WUSF's University Beat report previewing the 2015 St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs Feb. 26-28.

Some of the major international issues of the day - Cuba, Russia, Syria, terrorism and immigration - will be among the topics of discussion at a Saint Petersburg conference that's drawing experts from around the world to the Tampa Bay area.

Almost forty panelists, including 1986 Nobel Prize winner for Literature and expert on Nigerian democracy Wole Soyinka, along with diplomats, academics and military experts will share ideas and information during 16 free panel sessions.

Over a two-day conference that started Monday at the University of South Florida, experts are looking into the future of the Middle East and Central Asia in the year 2020 and what implications that has on American foreign policy.

One of the big "what if" questions at this conference was "who will have the bomb in 2020?" In other words, what are the possibilities of a Middle Eastern country getting a nuclear weapon?

For the second year in a row, St. Petersburg is hosting foreign affair specialists to talk about some of the most important international issues of the day, ranging from the United States' role in the Middle East, cyber-terrorism, and climate change.